This CD is an acoustic adventure into the world of bamboo and related grasses. It is inspired by the infinite variety of traditional cultures around the world that have used bamboo to produce musical instruments. David Hopkins uses about three dozen of them - ranging from the three-meter-long overtone flute to the bamboo saxophone and bamboo gong - but that represents just a small fraction of those that people have produced over the course of history.

The Cistercian Abbey Thoronet, the dark sister of Senanque, is sought out only by bats and other experts in echoes. Michael Vetter was inspired here to create two Songs of the Night: freely improvised liturgies, accompanied by tamboura, with expressive melodic development and several overtone passages to which the bats, crickets, etc., respond.

Erwin Schulhoff saw no contradiction between the worlds of Dada and dodecaphony. As one of the most stylistically "multilingual" composers of the early twentieth century, his output is unparalleled in it's variety - a variety that is impressively displayed in this selection of piano music for two and four hands. Schulhoff's "10 Klavierst�cke" [10 Piano Pieces] from 1919 reflect the influence of Arnold Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School. The "Ironien" [Ironies] for piano fourhands have the Dadaist, anti-establishment spirit of the great European cities of the 1920s. Though composed in free atonality, the cyclical "Musik f�r Klavier in vier Teilen" [Music for Piano in Four Parts] from 1920 has many of the characteristics of a Baroque suite, while the miniature "11 Inventionen f�r Klavier" [11 Inventions for Piano] from 1921 emphasize a broad spectrum of sound colors. Schulhoff explored classical form and tradition in his "Piano Sonata No. 3" from 1927. Born in Prague in 1894, Schulhoff - the son of German- Jewish parents and a staunch Communist - died of pneumonia in a concentration camp and his music fell into obscurity. That makes this recording all the more important as a document of the dazzlingly varied output of this remarkable composer from the period between the two world wars.

Manfred Trojahn was invited to the Villa Massimo in Rome in 1979/80 to work on his Second String Quartet, which had been commissioned by Radio France. What initially seemed like a golden opportunity for a young composer turned out to be a difficult period in Trojahn’s life, and this was reflected in the quartet, which moves restlessly between emotional outbursts, stasis, brusqueness, and moments of almost tender lyricism. The work documents a young composer’s search for an individual musical language in the early days of what we would now call the postmodern period. Manfred Trojahn was not interested in atonal dogma; the tonal relationships in his music reveal many sources of inspiration, including Romantic composers. “Hommage à L.v.B.” is an ironic tribute to the Classical tradition, while in “Abgesang” [Farewell], Trojahn brings together diverse elements from earlier sections of the piece: restless fluttering motifs, elegiac cantilena passages, and bizarre clusters. To prepare this production of what is for him a very personal work, the composer worked closely with the Minguet Quartet, mezzo soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner, and clarinetist Thorsten Johanns. The fruits of their efforts can be heard in this impressive recording.

Erinnerungsspuren by Alberto Posadas is an homage to the piano in six parts. In his "reminiscences", the Spanish composer brings to mind some of the best in his profession, taking them as sources for his studies of the piano's sound space. From Fran�ois Couperin to Robert Schumann and Claude Debussy to Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Karlheinz Stockhausen. What matters to Posadas in his cycle is not to make explicit connections to the past; he rather discerns concepts from the historical repertoire, namely Erinnerungsspuren [memory traces], that find expression in pianistic experiments. Special playing techniques with the pedals, with preparations and inside the piano allow changes of individual sounds and micro-intervals while they are resounding, thus creating a trans-historical sound space. In his cycle Alberto Posadas gives less answers than he raises questions in which the music of his six predecessors can be heard as sounds of remembrance: How can new and old material put each other in a different light and perhaps even redefine themselves? And what can be the meaning of quotations when it comes to building bridges between old and new, between the known and the unknown?

The purple sky above the Golden Gate Bridge is evoked by the title of Klaus Netzle's CD, which captures well the character of the seven synthesizer pieces on it. Catchy melodies and simple harmonies make for relaxing, varied entertainment, vivacity, and joie de vivre.

Dietrich Eichmann's music is contemporary music in the field of tension between improvised free jazz, Morton Feldman, Luigi Nono and, first of all, a compositional personality which is not "sterile" at all. Eichmann, as is amply illustrated on this CD, has adopted a clear compositional stance in today's battlefield of ideas and resultant moral world-views. And he is perfectly aware of the storms surrounding him.

Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, born in 1962, is a dual talent. Not only is he a composer, he also publishes articles on philosophy and music theory. He insists that music has a unique contribution to make to the aesthetic de-bates of our time. To abandon these debates would be disastrous: they are the ecological corrective to what he calls the "acoustical garbage" that surrounds us in our daily lives. Music's polemical barb is part of its artistic raison d’être. The link between music and aesthetics is a defining feature of the musical work of art.

On her portrait recording "earthing" the Berlin-based composer Clara Iannotta concentrates on the genre string quartet. Therefor she takes inspiration mostly from the idea of an underwater world and the small animals that let their luminous organs glow in the deep. The resulting music seems to be under the pressure of water masses but happens in an environment of expanded time. At the beginning of her journey into unknown depths Iannotta works with minimalistic and fragile sounds: 'They sharpen your sense of hearing, just as eyes can only slowly become accustomed to darkness'. Though at times her music can mount up to enormous and complex structures. Iannotta finds further inspiration for her quartets in the works of Irish lyric poet Dorothy Molloy and US-American writer David Foster Wallace or in J.S. Bach's "Partita no. 1 in B minor". Furthermore, phenomena of the wildlife have an impact on her compositional concepts as she explains to booklet author Theresa Beyer concerning the piece "Earthing - dead wasps (obituary)": 'A spider leaves it's carapace behind as an empty shell when it's growing. And suddenly two bodies are lying there - one empty, one filled - and thus two different temporalities. You might say that I composed a string quartet that sheds it's skin several times during the performance.' Sound and noise are represented equally in Clara Iannottas music. Partially, she prepares the strings of the instruments with paper-clips or tunes them down radically. Subtle electronic sounds can be found as well as counter bells, bird whistles, and styrofoam blocks. During the seven years in which the four string quartets have been written, Iannotta gradually leans towards the noise - a process of "earthing", towards the substance of sounds.

The music of the Slovenian-born composer Vito �uraj features multilayered stereophonic sound concepts. He often draws inspiration for his pieces from his passion for tennis, recreating the game's tension with sound. The Hawk-Eye concerto was developed with featured horn soloist Saar Berger. Changeover for instrumental groups and orchestra, is interpreted here by �uraj's frequent collaborator Ensemble Modern along with two ensemble works, Restrung and Runaround. A bonus DVD also contains �uraj's percussion trio Top Spin.

At the end of the 1970's, under the collective title "Young Avantgarde", the "Neue Zeitschrift f�r Musik" introduced seven composers from the generation which also includes Reinhard Febel. From their opinions it could be deduced that these representatives of the "new tonality" are pursuing a radical break "with the avant-garde value system that extends back to Sch�nberg. They reject not only particular methods of serial and post serial music, but even the concept of a musical avant-garde. Their polemic, against the idea of "material tendency" as well as their renunciation of a materially oriented historical legitimization of their own compositional practice, conforms to this change in musical thinking.

Early works usually provide information about the origin and first manifestations of a composer's musical personality; Hindemith's works for violoncello and piano written in the years 1917 and 1919/20 are no exception. To be sure the earlier pieces document above all the compositional point of departure - the influences of Reger and Strauss on the texture of the piano writing and harmony are obvious - while the later work already exhibits aspects typical of Hindemith's personal style in the 1920s which caused the composer to be viewed as a notorious musical terror. Julius Berger: violoncello / Siegfried Mauser: piano.

For the first time Hindemith's Clarinet Quintet op. 30 can be heard in it's original version of 1923. In this version it is one of Hindemith's wildest and most adventurous works, not to compare with the smooth conventional one of 1954 which has been the only version known. The Repertoire for Military Orchestra "Minimax" is one of Hindemith's musical parodies. It was composed in only two days to form the rousing finale to the Donaueschingen Chamber Music Concerts of 1923. Here Hindemith parodies the usual musical forms for military bands. The "Overture to the 'Flying Dutchman' as Played at Sight by a Second-Rate Concert Orchestra at the Village Well at 7 o'clock in the Morning" - undated but probably composed around 1925 - is not a parody of Wagner's music, but rather exactly the kind of music making described in the title. This music was found in Hindemith's remains and has not been published yet. Buchberger Quartett (Hubert Buchberger, Julia Greve: violin / Joacchim Etzel: viola / Helmut Sohler: cello) / Peter Klaus L�ffler: clarinet.

After 1980, important changes took place in the composition of Chinese music. As part of the increased communication between China and the outside world, Western contemporary music has begun to exert direct influence on the compositions of young Chinese composers. Contemporary Chinese music is joined by a new generation full of individuality. This new CD is the outcome of precisely that period: The music is based largely on traditional Chinese elements, but also on elements that at the moment are influencing new Chinese music from outside. Xiaogang Ye (b. 1955) is regarded as one of China's leading composers. He lives in Beijing, China, and Exton, Pennsylvania, USA. Ye is the founder and artistic director of the Ensemble Eclipse (China's first ensemble specialising in contemporary music) and an Associate Professor of the Central Conservatory of Music, Beijing. His works, which have been awarded numerous prizes, include both symphonic and chamber works as well as stage and film music.

These 1987 realizations of the Mathis Symphony and the Symphonic Metamorphosis from Herbert Blomstedt and the San Francisco Symphony, marking their first recorded collaboration, are powerful, deeply felt, and thrilling to the ear. The Mathis is particularly striking in it's evocation of mood: dramatic without being overblown. Blomstedt is notably successful with the score's difficult concluding movement-by making each of it's episodes substantive, he makes the whole seem less episodic than it usually does. Both here and in the Symphonic Metamorphosis, there is beautiful wind and brass playing from the San Franciscans; they are clearly well rehearsed and exhibit a commendable responsiveness to Blomstedt's direction. The recording is of demonstration quality: impressive in it's depth, sense of space, and visceral impact.